Lower power (yeah, but who cares?), better interrupts, a bit more difficult to program than the Arduino (mainly because you have to work with registers, but you’ll get used to it), almost no external components required (a capacitor and a 10-20K resistor, if you want ICP). And best of all, no fuses! :D
If you don’t win it, buy one. For $4.30 it’s well worth the price ;)
I’ve got one and I’m really having fun with it!

I think someone is stealing my coffee K-Cups from a cabinet in my office. If I won this, I would have it part of a control that knows that I am NOT in the office from 5:00 PM to 7:00 AM and controls a tazer that nails ANYONE attempting to steal my coffee.

There are four things of mine you don’t screw with: my family, my coffee, my beer, or my radios (whether it is the AM/FM radio or the one with a mic attached!)

I have a 3 year old step-son whose father got him a 4-wheeler power wheel that is WAY to big for him so he’s scared to drive it, but not sit on it (too big for him to properly steer). I wanted to make it remote controlled till he gets the hang of it but don’t want to waste my more powerful controllers…that and it’ll run forever on the battery in that thing… :-P

I would use this board as a teaching tool to teach my kids how to write code for simple microprocessors. A couple of them are interested in building a robot so I want to teach them how to use microprocessors and this would be a great way for them to learn it.

Near field unit for interaction with NFC android handhelds. Android software will report basic information (notes, voice mail status, current song playing, TV show wish list etc.) to a launchpad which will parse the information into scripts for automated response (stereo playback of current song, power TV and tune to appropriate channel, ect)

I am planning to build a wireless weather station. The nrf radios will stream data directly to my home server via a ethernet to serial shield I am developing right now. The low energy consumption of this board makes them ideal for my project. I am planning to open source this project if I get started soon.

I guess the best thing you could do with it is actually a tutorial page.Because,let’s face it: the Launchpad is an Arduino-like board that you can afford to use in all your projects, and not just for prototyping. For a first project ideea, I’m working on an AC motor speed controller. Good luck to all of us!

Just got my moisture sensor to use in the soil sent from Seedstudio…
So , id use it to finally implement it along with a relay for an automated watering to a plant pot with a small pump ( test first and then scale it maybe to outdoors soil?!?) with a MSP430 and the new language Energia ( Arduino compatible).
Been wanting one for a while, actually !! Lets hope ( hope is the last thing to go, dont they say so ?!?)

I want to use the LaunchPad and design a Booster Pack for receiving data from the Nes / Snes Pad with infrared protocol and sent to PC by USB connection LaunchPad. Also modify the Nes / Snes Pad to send and receive data through infrared protocol and function with battery.

I’ve just purchased a TI ez430 Chronos watch and plan to make a wireless bicycle speed sensor/transmitter to interface with it. This would then become part of the electric Honda Supercub project me and a colleague are planning (we live in Vietnam so cubs are cheap and plentiful).

I was planning on using a TI RF transmitter and a AVR MCU because that’s what I have the tools for but if I was to have a Launchpad it would be possible to go with the more streamlined complete TI solution.

Will make a nice digital light meter with mine, with an OLED display and push button and incremental encoder interface to calculate accurate image exposure values from measured lncident or reflected light.

I would use it to control my water tank pump automatically & also control lights in the toilets so that if anyone leaves the lights on it will switch them off after a defined time of inactivity sensed by a PIR sensor.
Also log these to a PC for displaying pretty statistics with graphs (to make my home a little more GREEN)

Whenever I leave a comment on these giveaways, someone comes along with some ultra fancy “ideea” which probably will never do, and wins hands down. I would use use it first for “blinkin’ led”, because it would be the first time I ever touch an MSP430. I would like to use it.
Thanks.

The only end to the possibilities are the ends of your imagination. I’m busy with some Opens Source Aquarium Automation project (well, the first phase will only be to automatically do some chemical tests) and for that I pondered the PIC18F range, but this would make a very nice part of the automatic tester… Details on the project will be on my blog in a couple of days, for now I’m trying to figure them out myself and doing some sketchup work for it…

I already have two of them as they are so cheap but I’d be interested in some ideas to use them. The Software support from TI is excellent and IAR also offers a free compiler (there is a size limitation in the IAR compiler but it’s bigger than what the chips included can handle).

I started out doing a lot of netmf stuff as C# is a language I know very well but then got interested in programming things directly in C/Assembler so beside my PIC boards that I got from PicCircuit.com recently I’d be interested to do something with these things as well.

What might be interesting is to write some sort of “demo” application for the bus pirate… like put it in I2C or SPI client mode and then respond to BP commands. Maybe a simple echo program to start with… receive 8 byte via I2C or SPI and send them back. Or emulate an eeprom chip with either protocol. Not sure that thing has native 1wire support but that may be solved via Software? I’ll keep thinking of more things but I excempt myself from the “competition” part as I already have two of them anyways (yes I got two to have them communicate with each other but never got past soldering the headers and installing the GUIs… then got sidetracked with some other stuff).

I have several projects including a remote weather station for back country ski conditions in New England, a controller for a wood fired hydronic heating system, a well pump controller to monitor well water production and automatically switch between wells as needed, …..
Thanks!

Thank’s for the tip about Energia… I didn’t know about that one… I love the Arduino idea and while I don’t have any “original” one I have the SparkFun serial LCD which is based on the Arduino architecture and a ChipKit board that also uses a modified Arduino IDE. I had give one Launchpad to a friend but she didn’t do anything with it yet as it is somewhat complicated for someone who’d never done anything with Microcontrollers… maybe that’ll help her get started with it finally… and me as well as I still have two more which I haven’t touched other than soldering the headers to it.

Yeah, i also use PInguino ( PIC32 based), so i know what you mean… Use AVR ( Arduino for simpler things, and AVR for complicated, faster needs)…and some PICs( assembler and C , mainly)…But havent had a chance of touching one of these…And due to the low power nature of the chip, would be nice to my project ! With Energia !! lol

Use it to make a keylogger and then program it to send keystrokes to automatically send the log output to a email address. Wait for the keyboard to become inactive before sending keystrokes to activate sending the log by email.

Sounds like the perfect platform to control a tomato garden hydroponics watering and sensor network. Perfect tomatoes every time! :-D Drop on a solar cell and a 12v lead acid plus a wifi connection for remote control and you’re all set!

This uC would be my first foray out of Arduino; I’d like to use the MSP430 in an autopilot for a r/c plane. If I read the datasheet correctly, there’s more digital I/O than on the ArduPilot (with the 20pin chip?), which is good in addition to the low power stats. Plus, it’s cheap enough to use multiple chips for a single project.

With this litle nice chip I can finaly read the temperature of my home, wich is now analog. I want to control it aswell by IR or some kind of wireless connection. And while its over there next to the dial, it can also switch my living room light on and of at sertain time with the free rtc i got from NXP

Did I told you guys already that NXP is giving away lots and lots of free ic’s ? I just finished a small powersuply for my raspberry, its just my dad wants his Pi back so I need something new to thinker with this warm summer vacation.

I’m thinking about a high school level, easily built, simple portable function generator. I’m tired of using the audio jack of my android phone for that purpose. Would be nice to have a simple portable one built with the Launchpad. Cheaply bought / easily replaceable should anything go wrong.